There are a lot of negatives that could be taken away from yesterday's mind numbing disaster of a showing by the Vikings. In rapid fire fashion: Kirk Cousins, especially early; the offensive line, Anthony Barr & many other facets of the defense, the pass catchers, even the punt & kick returning was bad. That's six negatives that took about 10 seconds to think of and the list could have been much longer & more detailed.
I have one take away from the game that may not get enough attention today and in the lead up to LA.
Simply put, it was a repeat of the NFC Championship game.
Okay, obviously game three of the regular season does not have the same weight to it that the Philly Flop did but the strings of similarities are there. Keep reading if you don't believe me.
In the event that you were unaware, last season the Vikings had one of the most exciting finishes to a game that there will ever be. I still have their last possession on my DVR and have watched it repeatedly. In the wake of that win the fanbase was electrified, it was all people could talk about. The media asked questions about it to players at every turn so that not even the players could move on. The cut & dry, business end of the league wasn't able to take it's place so that they could shift their focus to the Eagles. I'm not knocking anyone because I was as exhilarated about it as you were but then came the hammer.
I'm going to take door A and not revisit the championship game more than I have to. We all watched as the team was practically a no show in the lead up to the final game of last season.
Fast forward to the present
Eight days ago the Vikings were once again in a drama filled contest. Should it have been an easy win? In hindsight, yeah it SHOULD have been but it was anything but as the plays unfolded. With two chances to steal a victory from the mouth of defeat they came up short but the tie is very similar to the miracle finish last January. It was the talk of the fanbase all week and seemed to have lead to another dropped game.
My ultimate point is that after the debacle that was the Championship game the team still has not learned how to move on from a big game in a single weeks time. Maybe they bounce back against LA and I would be very glad to see that but such an outcome would do nothing to show that collectively they've learned from the past. All the talent in the world can be made moot if a team is not mentally ready to go, even against a team as bad as the Bills. Make no mistake, I'm not making a comparison of the Bills to the Eagles. That would be highly moronic, I'm not doing that. After the team found itself in the same position at they were in, in the lead up to the penultimate game a season ago, they fell flat on their face and found no way to get off the turf.
If they beat LA on Thursday and come back 10 days later to beat or even just compete with the Eagles then maybe the lesson will have started to sink in. Until then, we are stuck in a vortex that no one in the fanbase should be anything but irritated by. And what's worse, I don't know if there's anything meaningful that the coaches can do to correct or expedite correction of this problem. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news on this dreary Monday!